People spend remarkable amounts of time engaging with the internet. While some of that time is spent on productive, informational, or educational pursuits, other amounts—sometimes vast amounts—of time are spent viewing, interacting with, or “surfing” for web content found on various web pages. The webpages, and the websites that host the webpages, contain a wide variety of content with which the people choose to engage. The content includes news, shopping, sports, politics, cute puppy videos, and much, much more. Website analytics, commonly called simply “web analytics”, are performed to collect, measure, analyze, and report useful information related to a given website. The website information is analyzed in order to understand how people use the website and how to optimize the manner in which the website is used. Website analytics have been performed by analyzing the amount of time a person spends on a webpage, and the path through the internet that the person has taken to reach the webpage. Web analytics are often used by the enterprises that manage the websites, as well as by various market research groups, to measure how effectively the websites are performing for them. So, whether the enterprise is launching a new product, or the marketing research group is testing their advertising campaign, web analytics are used to determine website engagement and effectiveness.
Web analytics typically derive from a few basic actions. These actions include collecting and processing of data, developing key performance indicators (KPI), and formulating an online strategy. The online strategy is intended to further the goals of the website owner, whether those goals are to increase sales, to better provide important information, or to increase clicks on those cute puppy videos. Based on the results of these actions, enterprises can move forward with website improvement, and the advertising groups can boost their campaign performance.
The evaluation of the cognitive states of individuals who are visiting a webpage is key to understanding the individuals. The evaluation is also key to understanding the ways in which those individuals react to the world around them. Cognitive states run the gamut from happiness to sadness, from contentedness to worry, from excitement to calmness, from boredom to attentiveness, among numerous others. These cognitive states are experienced in response to everyday events such as frustration which stuck a traffic jam, boredom while waiting in line, impatience while waiting for that first cup of coffee, and even as people interact with their computers and the internet. Individuals perceive and empathize with other people by consciously or unconsciously evaluating and understanding the cognitive states of those other people. For example, an empathetic person may perceive in another person anxiety or joy and may respond accordingly. The ability and means by which one person perceives the emotional state of another is often quite difficult to summarize and has often been communicated as visceral or as a “gut feel.” Yet, automated evaluation of the cognitive states of people is far more challenging.
Cognitive states, such as confusion, concentration, and worry, may be identified to aid in the understanding of an individual or group of people. People can collectively respond with fear or anxiety, such as after witnessing a catastrophe. Similarly, people can collectively respond with happy enthusiasm, such as when their sports team obtains a victory. Certain facial expressions and head gestures may be used as cues to identify a cognitive state that a person is experiencing. Limited automation has been performed in the evaluation of cognitive states based on facial expressions. Certain physiological conditions may provide telling indications of a person's state of mind and have been evaluated in a crude fashion, as with an apparatus used for lie detection or polygraph tests.